


Nescience

by MilkTeaMiku



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-04 05:16:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6642730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkTeaMiku/pseuds/MilkTeaMiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I would give up now. Your way of painting is too hollow, and people won’t be able to find themselves in it. If you can’t connect to the audience, then you don’t deserve to paint.” </p><p>- </p><p>Bilbo ruins paintings, though he doesn't particularly care about the wasted effort. To him, it's all worthless if it can't connect to others, and it never has. Until Thorin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Won't You Be Kind To Me Tomorrow?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He searched for a name tag, for something that would link the painting he admired to a person, to something real, but there was nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nescience - _lack of knowledge or awareness; ignorance._

There’s a boy in the art room. He never wears proper uniform, and always paints without his shoes on, even though the building is often cold. His nose is always buried in a scarf, and through the falling sleeves of his sweater one is able to see that his wrists are always encased in white bandages, as though he were somehow injured. 

Come to think of it, no one has ever seen what lay beneath those bandages.

 

_“Stop with that useless painting! Can’t you see it’s awful?”_

_“Why does it matter what colour the sky is? You won’t be able to paint it.”_

_“You have to be an adult, now. Don’t linger in those hopeless dreams of yours.”_

_“It’s trashy. What a waste.”_

_“I would give up now. Your way of painting is too hollow, and people won’t be able to find themselves in it. If you can’t connect to the audience, then you don’t deserve to paint.”_

 

When Thorin was seven, he met a strange boy. The bus station he sat at was a lonely outpost on the small city’s streets, but crowds still moved through it in giant clusters that children were easily lost in. It was the one closest to the grocery store, but with a train station right next door it wasn’t too frequently used. As he waited for the bus with his groceries in both hands, the crowds crossing the streets had parted, and then Thorin had seen him. There had been a boy, smaller than him, standing before the wide entrance to the train station. It was his expression – distant, like he was perhaps lost but did not care – that had first drawn Thorin’s attention towards him, but what kept it was the fact that he, strangely, wore no shoes. 

At first, Thorin had discarded the boy from his mind as quickly as he’d seen him. When the crowds thinned and the next wave preparing to cross the street started to file in, Thorin turned his attention back to the boy, and noticed that he hadn’t moved. He simply stood there; a lone, solitary figure with his jacket falling carelessly off on one side even as he was shouldered aside by adults that did not quite see him, nor care to wonder why a child was in the city without parents.

Only after he had glanced down the street to ensure his bus wasn’t coming had Thorin moved over to the boy. Up close, the boy’s expression was incredibly blank, and his eyes never seemed to move any higher than eyelevel. His fingers were stained with blue paint, and there was a smudge of green across his cheek, as though someone had tried to rub it away with their thumb but had only done half the job.

“Where are your parents?” Thorin had asked. He had younger siblings and was good at getting along with people, but his voice only seemed to reach the boy after a noticeable moment. “Are you lost?”

“I’m hungry.” The boy had replied. He glanced back at the train station, where a train was still docked at the closest platform. “I took three trains.”

“Three?” Thorin asked, surprised. When he had glanced down at the boy’s bare feet, they were quite dirty, like he’d walked a terribly far distance. “Where are your shoes?”

The child looked down at his feet. “Ah… I forgot.” 

Thorin had sighed at that. He placed down a handful of his groceries, and riffled through one of the plastic bags in search of something in particular. From within it he had withdrawn a frightfully red apple, one of the nicer ones he’d selected, before placing it directly into the child’s small hands. “Here, have this.” He’d said, before standing again. The sound of a bus rumbled in the distance, and he moved to leave. “Make sure you get home safely, alright?”

He didn’t see the boy again, after that, though he hadn’t expected to. He saw countless faces every day that he’d never seen again, and just like all those faces, the boy faded into a memory that soon became unimportant and unmemorable. For most children, including those like Thorin, it was really easy to forget things like that.

 

There’s a boy in the art room. He sat on a lone stool, back slightly curved, bare feet propped up on the wooden rungs of the chair. Before him stood a large easel, easily taller than him standing, and on its horizontal ledge sat a canvas. He held a brush delicately between his fingers and painted unhurried, careful strokes that were incredibly thought out and entirely deliberate. 

It was a hideous painting, brought forth from a desire to capture the world into something tangible. The image itself was an indistinguishable thing, with indistinguishable shapes and figures, painted in unsaturated hues and uneven tones that were unpleasant to the eye. His brush, for a moment, hovered just above the ever-so-slightly bumpy surface of the canvas, before he drew it back to rest limply across his thighs. 

It really was hideous. He thought about starting it over, but it seemed like a hopeless task, a task that effort shouldn’t be wasted on, so he closed his eyes and let the image he had tried to paint slip from his grasp. There were colours staining his skin and his clothes alike, and absently his jacket began to slip off of his shoulder, as it often did. In the painting, there was no meaning to his lines, and nothing to connect with. His knowledge of light and dark was efficient, but all that he was doing was filling blank spaces, wasn’t he? 

The canvas he painted had, once again, become a place of imprisonment. He created meaningless things that brought out no emotion in those that viewed it, not even disgust or contempt. If nothing else, he wished for scorn or disdain, rather than hollow promises of admiration and reassurance. 

“Didn’t you hear? There’s going to be another new student-”

“That’s old news. Listen, isn’t he going to do it again?”

“Shh, he’ll hear. You shouldn’t disrupt him.”

“He’s going to ruin another one…”

“It’s not ruining anything. It’s _art.”_

 _Art._ He didn’t know what that was, and with careful motions, he dragged his brush through the top of a vial filled with black paint. They acted like he knew the answers they searched for in art, when really he didn’t even know how to feel pain at his own failures. He grew tired of the beauty that others saw, and instead searched for the kindness he thought he might have once had in others. 

He lifted the brush, and offered it to the hideous work before him.

 

“Who painted that?” Thorin asked. The administration building was filled with art evenly spaced along every vertical surface, sitting like despondent, solitary soldiers on walls where one’s eyes naturally strayed. His heart had lodged itself in his throat and stolen away his breath. It unabashedly began beating so loud that he could hear it in the space between his ears. “All these paintings… Who did them?”

“O-our students, mostly. If you’ll come this way…”

But, for a moment, his feet wouldn’t move. He searched for a name tag, for something that would link the painting he admired to a person, to something real, but there was nothing. To him, it was as though the painting was asking a question. No, it was pleading, and in a moment of panic he took a step back, overwhelmed.

_Won’t you be kind to me tomorrow?_


	2. Is It Cruel To Muzzle A Dog That Can’t Help But Bite?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, however, this one in particular seemed different – and it had nothing to do with the violent scribbles of black slashing through the colours as though they could possibly cancel out any of the feelings it had tried to convey.

“It can’t be helped.” The teacher said. “I know it’s your style, but… Call for me before you do this next time.”

His fingers tightened around the brush he held. “It can’t be helped.” He echoed. “It can’t be helped.” It repeated in his head like the tolling of a bell, and became a phrase that easily assimilated into his vocabulary. Soon there were many things that couldn’t be helped – like how paintbrushes splinted in his hands and how black paint ran down his wrists like veins and how he’d ruined another empty painting. Next time, it can’t be helped.

“Didn’t the school ask for a painting from him for the next gallery show?”

“That’s what I heard. He won the last one, didn’t he?”

“And the one before that.”

“They say he’s the talent of our generation… Or he will be…”

“He’ll probably win the next, too.”

_Next, next, next, next._

“Then why does he always ruin his paintings?”

It couldn’t be helped. He’d finished filling the blank spaces and had finally neared a perfect form, but it was so hideous he couldn’t help but try to cover it with black. He abandoned his brush in a dirtied water jar and leaned back to survey his work. It wasn’t anything so special, and in its lines and unhurried he colours he didn’t see any part of himself. No defeated sound left him as it perhaps would have once done, but he did close his eyes, just for a while.

 

_“Won’t you paint for me, my dear? Your colours are just so wonderful.”_

_“Are they really?”_

_“But of course. I love them very much.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Why? It just can’t be helped!”_

 

There was a boy in the art room. 

When Thorin pushed aside the sliding door, it noisily rattled in its tracks. The students in the room seemed used to the sounds it made, and none stirred or bristled at his presence. Unexpectedly, the room was cold. A chill wavered in through curtains that ruffled by open windows, but no one made a move to close them. He wished he’d brought a scarf.

“As I mentioned before,” the teacher murmured, “if you want to change partners, feel free to. I understand that working with him can sometimes be… A little difficult.” 

By the open window, a canvas stood on a tall easel. Just like the paintings in the administration there was something peculiar about the way they were painted, like they were asking a question without quite vocalising any words or emotions. Somehow, however, this one in particular seemed different – and it had nothing to do with the violent scribbles of black slashing through the colours as though they could possibly cancel out any of the feelings it had tried to convey. 

_Is it cruel to muzzle a dog that can’t help but bite?_

“I hope you settle in well. If that’s all you need for now, then…”

The doors rattled, and then they were silent. Thorin surveyed the room, but it was noticeably emptier with the door closed. He glanced across at the painting again, but his eyes strayed to the walls behind it, where canvases were stood up to three deep against each other. Just like the one resting on the easel, they were covered in black marks, as though someone had purposefully marred them. Thorin wondered how long they had been sitting there.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for…” He handed over the papers he’d been given, and when he was handed them back they were accompanied by a helpful point and a rather pitying glance that he chose to overlook. 

In the corner of the room, a worn out armchair sat pressed against the wall. Perhaps it was a little out of place in the cold art room, but even more so was the person slumped in its creases. There was a blanket pooled around his knees, exposing both his bare toes and his small, paint-stained hands. His skin had gone pale with cold, and he appeared to be sleeping, though why he was doing so in the current place and time was a baffling notion. 

Though he should probably wake the boy up – introductions were necessary, and they now had something they needed to accomplish – Thorin instead found himself reaching for the blanket. He pulled it up over the boy to cover his shoulders, where his jacket had fallen. When he withdrew his hands, he found that the boy had opened his eyes, and through the parted locks of his wavy hair he stared at Thorin.

“Hello,” Thorin began, surprised, “I’m…” And then his words wouldn’t come, as though he’d forgotten his own name. The boy’s eyes resembled the eyes in paintings that had been brought to creation by a rough brush, and they did not shine. 

“You’re Thorin.” He murmured. His voice was quiet, and impossible even. It did not waver. “I know.”

“You know?” Thorin repeated. He crouched down beside the armchair, and his eyes did not leave the boy’s. He didn’t think it was so farfetched to think that the students perhaps already knew his name even though he had only just arrived, but it didn’t matter, did it? “We’re going to work together, now.”

Hidden by the blanket, the boy turned away. His eyes were no longer visible, and as he quietly said, “I know,” again, Thorin was sure he knew why the teacher had said what they did. He felt uncertain in this situation, but did not forget what his goal was – to live normally, whatever normality would entail. He wouldn’t be discouraged. 

“Shall we begin?” He asked. 

But the boy in the art room had fallen asleep again, and he had become an empty and lightless fixture in the cold room. When Thorin stood, he turned his head towards the window and suddenly wondered if time could possibly flow in a place like this. It wasn’t anything special, he told himself. He wouldn’t be discouraged. 

“Ah, he’s ignoring someone again.”

“He should ask for a new partner as soon as possible, or else…”

“I know, I know.”

“How can he sleep at school? It’s so inconsiderate.”

“Just like the way he wastes all of the school’s materials…”

Abruptly, a rift had appeared in the room. For a single, fleeting moment it was as though the floor had torn itself open, and if Thorin should move across the rift then he would be on a side without a crumbling ledge. Just once, he took a step forwards to cross it, before it drifted too far away. But the feeling of a gaze burning through his back instead rocked him to the core, and he stopped. “Please don’t use such harsh words on him,” He said – _it can’t be helped, it’s just your greed_ – “I won’t be discouraged.” 

 

_“Won’t you keep painting forever, my dear?”_

_“I will, always. I promise!”_


	3. I Wonder, Are You Feeling Alone?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through the open windows behind Thorin, the sudden noise of an ambulance reached his ears. Distracted, he turned his head, but the sound whirled in and out of ear shot within moments.

Again, he painted. His arm was steady as he dragged the tip of the brush along the edges of the canvas. To him, it was as though the colours had run wild, desperately searching for some proof of existence in the shapes and lines they created. _Don’t betray them,_ he told himself. _Don't betray them._ And so he continued to paint and paint, hidden behind his easel, until his chest became tight and the colours before his eyes blurred into ugly forms that he couldn’t bear to look at.

“Ah, that looks good.”

“You paint very fast, huh?”

“Be careful not to ruin it, now.”

Slowly, he lowered his brush. Thick paint dripped off its end to stain his knee, but he made no move to clean it away. Wasn’t it okay if he ruined the paintings? It couldn’t be helped, right? Absently, he spun the brush in his fingers and thrust the wooden end against the canvas. It dipped against the sudden weight but it did not tear, and instead only a faint mark appeared in the surface of the paint, still wet.

When he withdrew the paintbrush once more, the horrid mark was only just visible. Easily overlooked, he thought that perhaps even he would come to forget that it was there. It was a break in habit, certainly, but no less insignificant than all the other unpleasant canvases that were slowly stacking up beneath him. This one… This one wasn’t anything special. 

 

_“You always laugh until your cheeks hurt. I can see it in your paintings.”_

 

Again, Thorin found himself in the administration building. When he walked through its corridors, where the walls were lined with paintings created by the boy in the art room, it was as though Thorin were walking hand-in-hand with him. No matter how detached the paintings were, they were still something special. His lips couldn’t form the words, “It’s nothing special” like they used to.

As it had before, the door to the art room rattled when he slid it open. Expectedly, this time, the temperature in the room was cold, and as he had been before, the boy sat before a tall easel. He hid behind it like a child afraid of the dark, though Thorin doubted any taste of fear could possibly be persisting in his mouth. Today, there seemed to be more paintings lingering under the open window, and just like the others behind them they were marred with black paint so thick that no colour showed up beneath it.

There was a teacher in the room, and when he stood beside the boy, the students followed. “This is wonderful,” he said, “is it finished now?”

The boy did not reply. He held his hand poised on the very tip of his brush, holding the bristles still in the vial of black paint he kept close by. When the teacher lifted the canvas to admire, Thorin’s eyes were drawn to the colours. They were unhurried and in them he was once again fronted by a question that lifted his heart into his throat. For a moment, his mind couldn’t arrange the words his eyes saw into anything he could understand, and as if purposefully guided by a hand, he looked back at the boy. 

He’d lifted the brush and its blackened bristles, and with careless but delicate motions, he’d sunk it into the closest water jar. Though his eyes did not leave his painting as it was carried away, the brush was completely cleaned of black paint and neatly returned to its place on the easel edge. It was only then that Thorin started to feel something that he could distinguish – a deep, familiar pang went through his chest as words started to form in his head like a gentle lullaby. _I wonder, are you feeling alone?_

For the first time, he wondered if all those paintings in the administration building had been as complete as he thought them to be.

 

“Do you spend a lot of time in here?”

The boy nodded. A new canvas had been placed on his easel, and with light colours he had begun to paint again. Sitting as he was, Thorin could see his wrists, exposed by the slumped sleeves of his slightly too-large sweater. They were tightly wound in white bandages, and when the boy lowered his hand away from the canvas, Thorin reached out to grasp it. 

From beneath the bandages, he couldn’t feel a pulse. “What happened to your wrists?”

The boy’s eyes lifted, and met his. Through the open windows behind Thorin, the sudden noise of an ambulance reached his ears. Distracted, he turned his head, but the sound whirled in and out of ear shot within moments. When he turned back to the boy, those painted brown eyes had been diverted. His wrist was slack in Thorin’s grip. “There’s nothing wrong.” He murmured. 

On the surface, it simply didn’t seem so. Thorin had always been able to read people, but this boy seemed to be more like a painting than a person. He glanced down at the wrist he still held, and took in the feel of the bandages against his fingertips. After a moment, he released it, and the boy returned to his painting. 

Thorin glanced across at the other students in the room. They crowded around the complete-uncomplete painting, and admired it with hollowness and gentle words. Before, he’d said, “Please don’t use such harsh words” but he wondered how many had already been said. Perhaps, if he’d made one choice differently, he too would be saying such cruel and admirable things. Instead, now, he said, “Please ignore those empty words.” 

His words were a success, as those brown eyes lifted again. A question simmered behind them, but only for a moment, and as the breeze ruffled the white curtains again they returned to their previous, painted state. 

“He’s still trying to get along, isn’t he?”

“He’ll see eventually that it’s useless. Artists like him… They don’t want to connect to others, not like that.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t asked to change, yet…”

“He’s new. Give it time, and he’ll be just like the rest.”

 

The feelings that grew in his heart had turned to words that revolved around his head, but not by his own doing. They were easily enough drowned in the smell of paint as he layered it onto the canvas over and over, and once again he thought that everything inside wasn’t anything so special.

 

_“You’ll always have your paintings, my dear, so don’t be discouraged.”_

_“But I don’t want you to leave.”_

_“I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”_

 

Words were simmering behind his lips as he lifted his brush over and over. _Won’t you walk hand-in-hand with me? Won’t you tell me that it’s not my fault, even if it’s just a lie? Can you make it hurt a little less, please? I don’t mean to complain._ Still, he swallowed them, and forgot that they had even surfaced in the first place. He couldn’t paint something that connected to others if his own misfortune tainted the colours. 

“What are you painting?” Thorin asked.

 _Help me,_ he ached to plead. “I don’t know yet.” He said instead. He’d paint red ribbons made from equally red apple peels and skies that were perhaps the wrong colour, unintentionally. Soon enough, all the colours he placed would be saturated in self-contradictions and unbalanced hues that he couldn’t stand the sight of. 

 

_“How can you call this art? It’s tragic.”_

_“I don’t understand it, not one bit…”_

_“You won’t always have your paintings, so grow up already. Don’t follow a path that will lead you to a cliff.”_

 

But what if he’d already walked off it?


	4. Aren't You Tired Of Making Dishonest Expressions?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was as though there were paper taped to his face, and on it someone had drawn a smile so that he could follow the “show the right expression!” command.

The sound of a band aid strip being torn open was startlingly loud in the quiet art room. “Really,” Thorin started, “you should be more careful.”

Today, the boy in the art room was bruised. Under his left eye dark circles swelled, marred only by a splotched, red line that cut shallowly into his cheek. Like a stroke of harsh paint, Thorin covered it with a band aid, and turned his eyes to survey the empty room. The easel lay flat on the floor, surrounded by fallen brushes and ink nibs and a steadily growing puddle of spilt, dirty water. The boy had fallen, then.

“You should head home soon,” Thorin continued, “it’s getting late.” Already the sun had started to set, casting the sky into an orange gradient that reminded Thorin not of itself, but rather of the paintings he’d seen in the administration building. Still, he somehow found himself remaining in the art room, seated on a stool much in the same way the boy was. Like this, he felt as though he should start painting too, but it was not his place. 

When the boy didn’t respond, Thorin stood. It was time for him to leave, but still he bent to lift the easel back into place. It felt worn under his fingertips, and the wood was cold. A lone paintbrush rolled off its ledge and clattered to the floor. Somehow, Thorin was struck by the thought that perhaps that bottomless rift in the floor of the art room had once again opened against his will. 

“Aren’t you tired of making dishonest expressions?”

A shaken noise left Thorin's lips, and he turned his head. The room really was so quiet.

 

_“You’re a useless child. Can’t you just grow up already?”_

_“You’re getting everything wrong! Give up!”_

_“Why do you waste paint on such awful pictures? Stop being a burden.”_

_“Get up. I said get up!”_

_“What an awful expression…”_

 

A crowd of faceless people watched him make faceless expressions at them like they intended to remember all the details. Behind him hung his painting, vividly bright with colours and shapes and something they perceived to be pleasing to the eye. He wanted to take a knife to it as though the knife were a paintbrush. It was like a badge of honour, that stab wound it caused. He should wear it proudly.

“You’ve done well. Congratulations.” 

_I can’t see. Show me where?_

“I can really see the direction you were going with.”

_What direction?_

“It’s wonderful you can do all this even with your studies.”

_I can’t do yesterday’s homework. Please help me._

“You’ve got quite the imagination. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

_Please, help me. Help me. I can’t see it, I can’t._

It was as though there were paper taped to his face, and on it someone had drawn a smile so that he could follow the “show the right expression!” command. That was enough, wasn’t it? He’d store up his ideals and spread them across the canvas and hope in vain that perhaps it was enough for someone to read into, but it never had been, had it? 

_Your way of painting is too hollow, and people won’t be able to find themselves in it._

It had never been enough, but he continued to smile anyway, because it was what was expected of him. “It’s easy,” he’d say, “I just paint.” _I’ll pretend to be the best until I am because you told me to._ It couldn’t be helped, for it wasn’t anything special. He would be more careful, next time, so that when he sighed no sound would escape and betray the feelings he tried to convey.

 

_“He’s a burden to us! How can we live with him here?”_

_"Be quiet, I’ll deal with him myself.”_

_“But… Just be careful not to-”_

_"I know, so be quiet!"_

 

“Oh, young man, what happened to your cheek?”

For a moment, his paper mask fluttered – “I fell” – but the smile remained intact. Would his cheeks start to hurt from a smile like this? That’s right, there was a band aid on his cheek – he’d forgotten, hadn’t he? Strangely, his chest had started to tighten like it sometimes did when he painted, and a dizzy feeling began to swell through his head. He wouldn’t betray the expectations others had of him, because they were the only connections he had. He couldn’t betray them, not if he continued to paint, even if he ruined it all; even if no one would hold his dirtied hands, they were right there, on the other side – the other side of the paintbrush, of the canvas, of the art room, of the gallery floor. 

They must be there.

Then, a hand grasped his.

 

“Come with me.” Thorin said. His brow was creased with worry as he watched the boy from the art room begin to crumble, alone, in a room full of people. “Come with me.”

There was a space behind the gallery walls where two people looking to breathe could escape to, so he went there. Although the boy’s façade – or was it really his normal expression? – had returned, Thorin couldn’t help but remember the moment his eyes had sparked and became lifelike. He wondered if anyone would be able to hear a single child breaking in two at a school full of children who were whole, but he felt like he already knew the answer. 

“Tell me,” he said, “do you know the answers to yesterday’s homework?”

There was no answer. The boy was quiet.

“Then, can you tell me the dreams you had as a child?”

The art room was quiet, too. 

Thorin tightened his grip on the boy’s bandaged wrist, hidden further by a layer of clothing from a smart jacket that didn’t slump off of his shoulder. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

This time, there was an answer. “I’m not.” The wrist slipped from his grip, and absently, the boy held it. Those bandages were still cold, even though they rested on skin that should be warm. He wondered what could be hidden under them. 

“Do you want to go?” Thorin asked.

Those odd brown eyes lifted, just a little. “Why?” He asked.

“It’s not enough, is it?” Thorin said. “You’re not satisfied, are you?” Inattentively, he reached out a hand to brush aside the locks of hair that obscured the boy’s face. “You can’t even smile properly, and they don’t notice...”

The hair fell back into place as soon as Thorin withdrew his hand. “I want to go.” The boy whispered. There was conflict staining his face, but Thorin didn’t know what kind, and as soon as he noticed it, it was gone. It was only then that he realised why so many people had told him to change partners, but to him, the project hardly mattered anymore. 

There was a rope around the boy’s neck, and he didn’t know how to loosen it.


	5. What Is Local Conflict, If Not A Conflict Of The Heart?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some sort of discord had happened to the boy, and Thorin thought that perhaps a ribbon holding together a very insecure part of him had been violently torn apart.

_“I just love what you paint, my dear. It makes me so incredibly happy!”_

 

On the day when the sky above him broke and the air was filled with a sea of black umbrellas, the ground tore itself open to claim someone precious to him. And from the black umbrellas, he learned that once one gives in, only dead ends and dull eyes awaited them. Guided by the cold hand of a stranger, he was instructed not to cry, but to instead say his farewells and that was all. He didn’t like the rain all that much, after that. It became a tedious thing to listen to, after a while, and it made him feel as though his safety blanket was being pulled apart thread by thread. 

To avoid all that he disliked, he stored up his ideals and imprisoned them on a canvas, even if he despised it. And even if he could not see what was ahead, he wasn’t running away. He had a prepared gradient, and he knew what the contrast between light and dark was. It wasn’t running away; he had nowhere to run to.

 

_“Your paintings have no personality.”_

_“Can’t you feel anything at all?”_

_“He’s a bad child, stay away from him…”_

_“He spends all his time painting, and yet nothing comes from it.”_

 

A child sat before his easel, brush poised. The room was silent, and so were the voices in his head. Although outwardly calm, it was his eyes that betrayed him, for they were wide open with helplessness, and his pupils were nothing more than tiny specs lost in an ocean of doll brown paint.

What a useless child he was, unable to even do the simplest of things. Self-introductions, saying “goodnight” and “good morning” and just smiling were things already far out of his reach. Even so, if he could no longer reflect a confident figure, he would paint. One hundred times – no, a thousand times would his brush touch a canvas, trying to lead the feelings he felt inside to the surface. He’d paint, and paint, and paint, until his skin became saturated in colour and he could say that the smile on his face was painted so well that he would always be believed.

And yet, the room remained quiet.

 

The hand Thorin grasped was shaking, just slightly. “Hasn’t it been long enough now?” He asked. “You’ve been painting for hours without taking a break...”

The boy in the art room was very different today. There was a tenseness trembling beneath his shoulders, and had Thorin not been looking he would have never noticed it. Some sort of discord had happened to the boy, and Thorin thought that perhaps a ribbon holding together a very insecure part of him had been violently torn apart. For a moment, Thorin thought back to the gallery showing, and he wondered if the awards and praise the boy received truly meant anything to him. To Thorin, they seemed hollow, like they were generic sentences one could pull from a hat to solve any conversation like it was a problem written on a blackboard.

“Painting,” the boy began, “is all I can do.”

Thorin looked at the paintings that lay stacked up and abandoned beneath the windows. He’d never taken interest in counting them, and he did not intend to now, but to take them in made him feel as though perhaps the conflict in the boy’s heart had been going on for far longer than he had previously thought. What sort of local conflict was the boy experiencing? When a chill overcame him, he stood, and moved to shut the window. He didn’t think he’d ever seen it shut, and when the latch clicked into place, he suddenly felt so stifled that he wished he’d left it open. 

When he left that evening, the boy remained. The doors rattled in their tracks, and when they finally slipped shut, he saw a glimpse of the boy through them, just for a moment. He sat before his canvas, brush suspended, and for a breath Thorin was sure he would continue to paint. But his eyes were frightfully wide, like he’d been told something frightful, and at the last second he withdrew the brush. 

_What is a local conflict, if not a conflict of the heart?_

 

The art room was cold, he thought. Had it always been this cold, the kind of cold that numbed his toes and his fingertips and made him never forget to bring a scarf so that he could bury his nose in it? It was hard to remember when he could feel the worn grain of a wooden brush between his fingers. Before him stood a canvas with blank spaces begging to be filled, and yet his hands trembled too much for him to safely press down the bristles of the paintbrush.

_“You’ve messed up again!”_

He didn’t mean to.

_“Get out of my sight!”_

Please, just listen- 

_“Get out!”_

It hurts. Please, don’t do that again. It hurts. It hurts. 

 

When he’d knocked the easel over, it had been so loud. With such a quiet room suffocating him, the sound of it had been deafening. For a sick moment, he relished the sound of it banging to the floor, and every clatter of the brushes that fell from it had left him feeling mind-numbingly satisfied. He hadn’t fallen. He’d lied. He was a liar. He’d continued lying. 

He hadn’t fallen.

What was he meant to do, if he couldn’t paint? When he looked at the painting that sat before him, as pretty as a picture, he wanted to ruin it. When he looked at it, there was nothing that connected with his feelings, and nothing that would reach out to others. If he couldn’t do something as simple as making a connection, then he didn’t deserve to paint. Should he paint, or had he not deserved the right to try and connect with others? The more he thought about it, the more he started to believe that both options were wrong.

He couldn’t read the problems on the blackboard, and he couldn’t read his own imagination. He didn’t know the answers to yesterday’s homework, and he was unable to recite the dreams he had as a child. He wanted to connect to people, but he couldn’t find enough of himself to offer, and so he remained captured in paintings after paintings misshapen and slashed with black. There had never been someone who looked at what he created and thought that perhaps they might see a little of themselves in it.

There had never been anyone, until Thorin. How had Thorin not crossed the abyss that remained deeply rifted between himself and the ability to connect with others? How could Thorin’s eyes see what no one else’s could? Hastily, he tore at the bandages covering his wrists, desperate to know what kind of person he was.

Smooth, unmarred skin greeted his dull gaze. Perhaps he wasn’t such a liar, anymore.


	6. There Are No Kind Knives In This World, Are There?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once more, the window was open. His blanket had fallen, too. It filled Thorin with an incredibly uncomfortable sense of déjà vu, and made him think that nothing had changed since the day they had met.

The boy in the art room was asleep again. He was a fixture in the room, one easily ignored, just like the armchair he favoured. Once more, the window was open. His blanket had fallen, too. It filled Thorin with an incredibly uncomfortable sense of déjà vu, and made him think that nothing had changed since the day they had met. 

When Thorin carelessly woke him, he looked rather forlorn. “Did you rest well?” Thorin asked. 

The boy didn’t answer as he slowly pulled himself upright. He lifted a paint-stained hand to rub the sleep from his face. The bandage around his wrist had come loose, and the end began to unravel, but not enough to expose the skin it self-consciously hid. He didn’t answer Thorin, but seemed unafraid to meet his eyes.

“Will you paint?” Thorin asked instead. When the boy went to fix his bandage, Thorin reached out to hold his wrist, stilling it. “I don’t think you should.”

For a second, something flashed through the boy’s eyes, something that was like dismissal or fear, but it was quickly gone. He shook his wrist free of Thorin’s grip, and returned to his place before his easel. 

 

_“My, what a mess you’ve made, my dear.”_

_“I’m sorry…”_

_“Nonsense. A mess means you enjoyed yourself, isn’t it so?”_

_“Mmm.”_

_“I just love seeing you paint. I wish that you’ll never, ever stop.”_

 

He wanted to live in this world, but he knew the kindness he sought was out of reach. As he lifted his brush, over and over, it became more apparent that painting was his tragic attempt at connecting with others. Wasn’t it obvious? How many times had he heard that it was unattainable, and yet he continued to pursue it? Perhaps that was the ideal he’d been imprisoning in his canvases all this time. 

“Have something to eat,” Thorin said, “it’s the least you can do.”

The boy stared blankly at the apple that Thorin had placed in his hands. It was red and rosy, and felt uncharacteristically warm against his cold fingers. For a moment, he closed his eyes and he heard the sound of a train pulling into its station and the loudness of crowds he hadn’t ever experienced before. The sounds drifted out of focus just like other recalled memories often did, but he was still left with the apple in his hands. If he peeled off its skin, would the skin turn into a red ribbon? He thought that it might, and the concept of the ribbon was appealing to him. Much like his bandages, a ribbon could hide things, could hold them together. 

“You don’t like apples?” Thorin asked.

He didn’t know if he liked apples. He didn’t know if he liked himself. Still, he took a small bite, and let himself eat it. He didn’t think he would have in any other situation. The apple itself wasn’t anything special, he thought – was anything? – but it tasted sweet. Perhaps Thorin had a talent for picking only the ripest of them from the grocery store. “I don’t dislike them.” He eventually settled on saying, and satisfied with his answer, Thorin turned back to what he’d been doing.

So Thorin didn’t remember, then, that they’d met before. 

 

_“Don’t cry, you have to be an adult now.”_

_“Why do you bother painting so much?”_

_“She wouldn’t have liked this. She wouldn’t have liked any of it.”_

_“You have to grow up already. There’s no place in a child’s world for you anymore.”_

_“I said don’t cry!”_

 

For the most part, they were faceless people that told him those things. They’d always been faceless people. He was a faceless person too, one who couldn’t make the right expressions on command and who couldn’t form a smile, even if he were to be happy. He couldn’t recall a time when he’d been around people who looked and sounded familiar, because he didn’t know what familiarity was meant to mean. If he knew a person for a week, for two; for sixth months, or for a year, or even for more than that, then were they familiar to him? Where they people he could say he knew deeply, or where they always stuck in unfamiliarity, because he was unable to connect with them?

He tried to look for answers in the things he painted, for proof in the colours he used, but none ever came. Even though he painted and painted and painted, no one ever told him that his paintings made them happy, or sad, or frustrated or angry or resentful or forlorn or solemn. They told him that his paintings were good, that they had direction and technique, but that didn’t matter, did it? He didn’t paint for technique. He didn’t paint to show a scene. 

He didn’t know what he painted for anymore.

 

_“I… I don’t hate it, I don’t… I just want… I want…”_

_The sound of the easel clattering to the floor really was so loud._

 

Thorin scrubbed at the boy’s hands insistently. “You paint so delicately, and yet you get covered.” He remarked. “You should take more care with your materials.”

“I…” The boy began, before his eyes lowered, and shifted to the side. “I like the way the paint feels on my skin.” Just faintly, his fingers twitched, like he was remembering something painful. “It’s nice.”

Thorin paused for a moment, before he hummed. He continued to clean the paint off the boy’s hands, careful not to get his bandages wet, though he made sure to be a little gentler with his scrubbing. “Paint can be easily washed from skin,” he said, “but clothes are a little more challenging.”

His clothes were stained with splotches of paint almost everywhere. Thorin was sure he had more than one uniform, but they were all the same, just like this. The boy wore them like they were armour, and somehow Thorin thought it was just the same thing he did when he didn’t wear shoes in the art room. The stained clothing couldn’t protect him.

“However, clothing can be thrown away.” A breath left Thorin’s lungs, and he stilled his hands. “But skin is easy to wash, isn’t it? And underneath is the person who paints, but that person isn’t the person I see. Can you not show me him?”

“Why?”

“Why? There’s no particular reason.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s alright.” Thorin soothed. “It isn’t something you need to. This talent of yours… It’s got something missing, doesn’t it? I hope that you find whatever it is you’re looking for in your paintings. Just be more careful, hmm?”

The boy’s hand twitched again, and his eyes lifted. “Something missing?” He murmured. “What do you mean?”

The room had turned colder, and for a moment Thorin thought that perhaps he’d said something wrong, but he shook those thoughts away. “Well… I really love your paintings,” he said, “but you always seem to reject them. It’s an imperfect talent.”

 

_“I would give up now, if I were you.”_

_I don’t understand. Everyone said they liked it, and it won that- that award. What do you mean?_

_“Your way of painting is too hollow, and people won’t be able to find themselves in it. If you can’t connect to the audience, then you don’t deserve to paint.”_

_Can’t… can’t connect? What? I don’t understand- I don’t- Please stop, I don’t want to hear that, please don’t say it, please please please-_

_“What an imperfect talent you have.”_

 

Violently, he jerked back his wrist. _Imperfect talent, imperfect talent, imperfect talent._ “Get out.” He whispered. 

Thorin withdrew his hands like a frightened animal. “Pardon?”

“Get out!” He shouted. “Get out, get out!”

“I didn’t mean-”

“You don’t mean _anything!”_

Thorin recoiled. The boy didn’t see him move, too blinded by the shouts in his head and the echo of his voice in the tainted art room. When the doors rattled and shut, the noise of them becoming deafening, and then everything was silent. In a fit, he staggered to his feet, and gripped the easel as though it had shoulders he could shake. A canvas sat on its ledge, and he snatched up the closest ink nib he could find. He held it in his hand like a knife, and in a large slashing motion, he pierced the canvas’s surface. _There are no kind knives in this world, are there?_ It tore straight through, and with it he felt as though someone had pried apart his ribs to expose everything he’d kept carefully hidden away. 

With a shout, he pushed aside the easel. It tumbled to the floor, and the wooden frame of the destroyed canvas creaked as though it would snap. 

“An _imperfect talent?”_ He said. “What a joke.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was in a rush to get this one out today, so it's not as good as I wanted it to be ;v; I went out to watch the new Captain America movie tonight, so I was out quite late, hehe ^^"


	7. You Won't Ever Forget About Me, Will You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If not for the slash tearing the canvas in two, he thought it would have been quite a wonderful painting.

_“Do you want to change, child?”_

_“But do I need to?”_

 

There was no boy in the art room when Thorin next returned to it. The doors rattled when he pushed it open, and although the hallway adjacent was silent, the room was loud with whispered murmurings. For a moment Thorin couldn’t figure out why scorn was so heavy in the air, but then his eyes strayed across the floor, and he saw what it was that tainted the room.

The boy’s painting was slashed straight down the centre, as though someone had taken a knife to it. There was so much anger and frustration in the motion that for a moment Thorin felt as though he couldn’t breathe. Had he caused that? A sick feeling had started to condense in his stomach as he edged closer, and it felt as though time itself had stopped as he looked at the boy’s ruined space. His easel had been knocked over, and his black paint had spilled across the floor from between the cracks of its broken vial. Thorin had never seen anything so chaotic in its simplicity, and it left him feeling stiff and unsettled. 

“I can’t believe he’d destroy so much material…”

“It really is a waste, huh?”

“He shouldn’t have started if he was just going to ruin it.”

“He really needs to change.”

He’d called the boy’s ability an imperfect talent, and from this he could see that it was one. There was no denying it, not when he was faced with the boy’s failures and the knowledge that the boy had intentionally destroyed everything he’d created. Now, however, he started to wonder if there was more to the boy’s paintings than simply the action of creating. When he’d looked at the boy’s paintings, he’d always felt something. Although it was completely indescribable, there was something about them that made a connection in his head click into place. 

Perhaps it wasn’t the act of painting the boy wanted, but a connection.

 

The bandages had started to itch. Anxiously, he scratched at his skin with a nail, and wondered why he’d started to wear them in the first place. He thought it was perhaps because if he were already hurt, or appeared to be, then he could no longer be hurt anymore. He wondered what would happen if he didn’t have them, and absently, he began to unwind the bandages. 

They fell from his wrists like ribbons, and soon enough his wrists were bared to the cold of his bedroom. The skin was smooth, if a little indented from the fabric of the bandage, and faintly paler than the rest of his arm. He felt unprotected without them on, but made no move to rewind them around his wrists. Perhaps it would be best if he didn’t hide behind them anymore.

 

_“What an imperfect talent you have.”_

 

He wondered how the silence in his head could be so deafening. He didn’t think it was possible to hear anything when it was so quiet, and yet pain pounded through his head like the never ending echo of a voice saying words he didn’t want to hear. For how long had he been tormented by people who wouldn’t even try to understand what he painted?

He just wanted to paint. It had brought his mother so much happiness, and through it he had always been able to hear what her heart was saying. Was it wrong of him to want to connect with others like that, when it was all that he had known? He wanted to paint because it was what he was good at, and anything that had connected him to the most precious person in his life couldn’t have ever been imperfect.

 

_“My darling, come closer, won’t you? Give me your hand. Can you feel my heart beating?”_

_“Not really… I’m sorry.”_

_“Press a little harder, and listen closely. There it is, isn’t it?”_

_“Mhmm.”_

_“That is proof that we’ve connected.”_

_“But it’s not a painting.”_

_“Oh, how you make me laugh, my dear. You’re right, it’s not a painting, but it’s just as good, isn’t it? To feel the proof of my life, beating before your very palm.”_

_“It is.”_

_“Now, my child, even if my heart is not always there for you to feel, we will always be connected.”_

_“How?”_

_“Well, your heart beats as well, does it not? We’ll always be connected.”_

_“I can feel mine too.”_

_“Good boy. You won’t ever forget about me, will you?”_

_“No.”_

_“I love you so very much, my darling, paintings and all.”_

 

He held his wrist, and tried to press around for a pulse. He felt as though it was coming through his thumbs, and after a moment he found it, beating rhythmically beneath his skin. He’d spent so much time searching for proof of life in the colours he painted, but it was right here, wasn’t it? 

For the first time in a long time, he wanted to paint just to feel the brush beneath his fingertips. 

 

When the boy returned to the art room, Thorin was seated on his stool. He’d cleaned up the area – washed the paint from the floor, righted the easel, arranged the paintbrushes to be as they had before. In his hands, Thorin held the painting the boy had destroyed in his frustration. Thorin didn’t know how long he’d spent simply observing the broken painting, trying to understand everything that had gone into each and every brushstroke and all the careful choices of colour. If not for the slash tearing the canvas in two, he thought it would have been quite a wonderful painting.

One he would have never looked at the way he looked at it now.

“What do you want with that thing?” The boy murmured quietly. He kept one hand on the half-opened door, and regarded Thorin with eyes that Thorin didn’t recognise.

Thorin watched him for a moment, before returning his gaze to the painting. He ran his thumb along its edge and tried to make sense of the feelings he felt in his chest. “You were angry,” he said, “when you did this. Not when you painted it, but this part.” Absently, he ran his fingers over the jagged edge of the fraying canvas.

“That much is obvious.”

“Is it, though?” A frown creased Thorin’s brow. “You always paint… And paint and paint… But I never understood why. I don’t think I ever tried to.”

The boy’s fingers tightened on the door. He wasn’t wearing his bandages, Thorin noticed, but his sleeves covered most of his wrists. 

“I’m sorry,” Thorin murmured, “but I’ve really admired your paintings since I first saw them. I didn’t realise that I was hurting you, that we all were. If this is how I can connect with you, then I’m going to look and look until I see what it is you want to tell me.”

The boy blinked, and in that brief moment his eyes were hidden, tears sprung to the surface. Thorin wasn’t sure what he had said, but whatever it was had made a connection, for the boy had started to cry. His eyes glistened and no longer appeared chalky like paint, and as a tear dripped off his cheek, he suddenly startled. Trembling, he lifted a hand to his face, and touched his fingertips to the wet streaks on his cheeks. “H-huh…?”

Out of all the things Thorin could do, he decided to laugh. It was a light, fulfilling sound, he thought. “Don’t worry, you’re allowed to cry.”

“I… I’m allowed?” The boy murmured. His knees trembled, and he collapsed to them soundlessly. With a hand pressed to his face, he began to self-consciously scrub at the tears that marred his face, but they wouldn’t stop. Thorin didn’t think he wanted them to.

And so he cried.


	8. Do You Want To Change?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he painted, he tried to recall what his mother’s heartbeat had felt like.

There’s a boy in the art room. He never wears proper uniform, but somehow it suits him. He always paints without his shoes on, even though the building is cold he never shivers, and he never complains. His nose is always buried in a scarf, and through the falling sleeves of his sweater one is able to see the smooth expanse of his pale, unmarred wrists. 

Perhaps Thorin had been the only one to ever notice them.

 

For the first time, Thorin thought he could see the boy properly, as though a mask had been removed to reveal his face beneath it. Though he sat on his stool with his feet bare and his jacket only half-on, just like he always had, he seemed different. When he painted, he still used the same colours, and the same careful, unhurried strokes, but when the bristles of the brush touched the canvas what came out was different.

“What does this part mean?” Thorin would ask, as he’d peer over the boy’s shoulder.

“Nothing in particular.”

It was always the same answer, but Thorin did not believe the boy was being insincere. Something small, something barely noticeable, had changed in the way he painted, and although Thorin didn’t understand it, he saw it.

Sometimes, the boy painted red lines through his works. They were much different to the black slashes he less frequently used, but there was something about them that Thorin was drawn to. They twisted and curled through the shapes and colours as though they’d been there all along, and reminded him of a ribbon being tossed around in a gentle breeze. While the boy hadn’t completely changed his painting style, and the ranks of ruined paintings stacked against the wall still increased, the ferocity with which he painted had lessened. 

Tomorrow, too, Thorin thought he would improve.

 

_“I love you very much, my child. I hope that one day you will find happiness…”_

_“But why do you have to go? I don’t want you to leave…”_

_“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”_

_“But I’ll be alone, Mama! Please don’t leave me.”_

_“I’m so sorry. I love you so much, I… I really do, love you…”_

 

When he painted, he tried to recall what his mother’s heartbeat had felt like. Amidst the harsh smell of cleanliness in her room and the stiff, foreign sheets of her bed, her heartbeat had been a beacon of warmth and comfort. If he tried hard enough, it was as though he could hear it beating in his very own chest. Through hearts, one made a connection, and the sound of it beating rhythmically beneath his skin was comforting.

“And what about this part?” Thorin asked.

He asked a lot of questions, but the boy didn’t particularly mind. He’d always painted with the same goal waiting ahead, and that was something that hadn’t yet changed. This time, Thorin pointed at the beginning of a red streak, to the place where the boy’s red-strained brush was connected to the surface of the canvas. He regarded it carefully, and quietly drew the brush away. He’d painted it without thinking this time, much like he did with all of his paintings. Perhaps he’d started to change, even a little.

 

“You didn’t lie to me.” Thorin said. He held the boy’s wrist captured in his hands, sleeve pushed back to reveal the expanse of his delicate skin. He thought back to the time when he’d first caught the boy’s wrist and felt those cold bandages beneath his fingers, worn tight and like armour. Although splotched with patches of dried paint, there was nothing else there. It was a surprise to find that the boy’s skin was warm, after all. 

“I did lie.” The boy said quietly. 

Thorin glanced up. The art room was still a cold, quiet place no matter who painted in it, but it was easy to forget when the boy’s eyes had turned glazed with colour unlike any he’d seen in them before. 

“Before, when I told you I fell,” the boy say, “I lied.”

With a noticeable start, Thorin was reminded of that bruise beneath the boy’s eye. His skin had been cut, too, had it not? The knowledge of the source of that bruise washed over Thorin’s mind like a shock of cold air, and it left him with an awful taste in his mouth. 

The boy didn’t say anything at Thorin’s silence. Instead he lifted a hand to touch his cheek where that dark bruise had been, before he continued to paint. 

It was hard to say something when there were no words in his head to describe how he felt. Thorin felt as though no one had ever looked deeper than the surface, instead choosing to believe that what they saw was truly how the boy was. Even Thorin was guilty of it. “We’ll figure it out.” He told the boy quietly. It was all he could think of to say.

“Will we?”

“We will.”

 

“We’ve met before.” The boy said. “Ten years ago.”

Thorin looked surprised. Although the boy knew he had been forgotten, it was still strange to see Thorin begin to remember the encounter at his prompting. “Did we?”

He nodded, but did not stop painting to glance at Thorin like he wished to. Although he was unable to make the right expressions, he knew that Thorin could, and they were quite readable. “At the train station.” He said. “You gave me an apple.”

“I remember.” Thorin said. “I thought you were a child.”

“I was.”

“I guess I was too.” Thorin said. “You looked so lost, I could hardly believe a child was out without an adult.”

“They didn’t notice I was gone.”

Thorin was quiet for a moment. “You were hungry too, huh.” He finally murmured. “I hope you’re not lonely anymore.”

He was still lonely, but it had become something he was so used to that he’d become desensitised to its presence in his personality. It no longer seemed like something he should shy away from, or try to change, but perhaps it would eventually go away as easily and seamlessly as it had come. He believed Thorin when Thorin said that everything would be figured out, because it was the first time anyone had ever told him that with nothing more and nothing less than sincerity in their eyes.

“Before, you asked what this was.” He said as he drew a harsh line of red paint through his painting. It stood out brightly, but it was gentle, and so unlike how the colour red usually seemed. To him, it thrummed with energy. It reminded him of his mother.

“I did.” Thorin said.

Bilbo smiled. “It’s a connection.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, this was fun to write :') I only intended for it to be short, so this is the ending I had planned ^^ I'm really not sure what to do now, hehe ^^" 
> 
> Suggestions are always welcome!


End file.
